The present invention deals with closures for plastic containers having wide top openings, such as jars and cans.
It is highly desirable to provide a plastic jar or can with a tamper-evident plastic closure capable of being easily opened and reclosed without the use of a tool, incorporating a gas permeation barrier, particularly when it is necessary to maintain the integrity of the contents of the container, as for example carbonated beverages. Thus, the closure should at least in part be a gas barrier. While showing whether it has been damaged or tampered with, it should also be sufficiently reclosable to avoid contamination of the contents after opening of the container.
To accomplish this is so difficult that plastic can closures were avoided for carbonated beverages, and aluminum lids are employed instead, the same as for the metal cans the plastic containers were intended to replace. When used with plastic cans, these lids, being of a different material than the can bodies, result in substantially increased cost of recyclcing the used cans, which, along with the high cost of the metal is the reason for the plastic can heretofore having been unable to replace the metal can in its prevalent markets.
Thus, the present invention represents an important advance in the use of plastic barrier containers with a wide top opening, i.e., wide-mouth containers and cans.
It is a principal objective of the present invention to provide a plastic closure for plastic containers having a wide top opening, e.g. cans, that is readily recyclable, that has resistance to gas permeation, is tamper-evident and capable of being easily opened and closed.
It is a still further objective of the present invention to provide a plastic container lid as aforesaid which is easy to prepare, inexpensive and easy to use in practice.
Further objects and advantages of the present invention will appear hereinbelow.